Volume Estimation of Various Brain Components Using MR Images - ATechnical Report

[摘要] In this paper, we present and discuss issues related to volume estimation of various brain components using MR brain images. We discuss pre-processing techniques to remove elements such as skull, blood vessels and fats from the MR images since these are non-essential to the volume calculations. The volume estimation is based on image segmentation. A challenge in MR brain image segmentation is to distinguish central gray matter from surrounding matters. This paper provides a frame work from pre-processing stage through volume estimation for white matter, gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The main contribution of this paper contains two parts. First, it provides a software-based method for interactive image pre-processing; second, it introduces a software-based, supervised interactive image segmentation method to deal with the segmentation of different matters, especially the central gray matter. Experiments with real data demonstrate the efficiency of our frame work.

[关键词] Image segmentation;Magnetic Resonance (MR) images;Central gray matter